Gitelman Reading Response

Sitting here, eating my frozen blueberries blended with orange juice, I decided to get some of my work done "early". This reading and post isn't technically due until Thursday before class, but I'm going to get it done Tuesday night since I have a boatload of other things to do this week. Plus, I want to have time later to Skype with my beloved sister who I miss dearly. Not that she'll ever read this...

So, the Gitelman reading was hard for me to follow at first. I had to go back and reread the beginning to really understand why she was complaining about... something with the Internet and the  "least recently modified web page". Detailing how she believes the "least recently modified" page really HAS changed, such as its location, name/title, context and appearance, she proves her point very well. Gitelman writes that "The least recently modified web page is offered to readers as a historical document within a context that complicates the very grounds of its historicity," meaning since the "least recently modified web page" really IS modified in its name, location, contextual changes, etc, its historical value is invalid. (?)

Gitelman uses some interesting analogies to describe the internet and its many kinds of contents as evidence, such  as art student looking at slides of paintings, knowing they are know the real thing, but also assuming and agreeing with the "computer source" (EVIDENCE) that they actually exist in real, physical form somewhere.

Gitelman also asks some interesting, rhetorical questions which she does her best to answer later on: "How are media the subjects of history when doing history depends on so many tacit conditions of mediation? How might present attempts to historicize the Web be complicated by the users and characteristics of the Web itself?"

I particularly like the second set of questions. It made me think about trying to create a history of the internet and the ways that it could get so very complicated because of the ways it is always evolving and the ways that people use it on a daily basis. How do you chart the history of something when the history is always changing? With the number of records being kept online always growing, how can we ensure that they don't get lost in the translation or moved and forgotten about? What's to say they just happen to disappear all together?

Search engines help to find the information, but where did it first originate on the Web?